


Fida Canum

by jenny_of_oldstones



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Red Dead Redemption (Video Games), Red Dead Redemption 2
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Daemons, Death, Gen, His Dark Materials Inspired, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2019-09-25
Packaged: 2020-11-02 08:34:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20685203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenny_of_oldstones/pseuds/jenny_of_oldstones
Summary: Arthur once read that men with dog daemons were naturally inclined to occupations where they had to follow orders—butlers, soldiers and the like. The author was suspect in how he came to that conclusion, citing a great deal of phrenology, but Arthur supposed it made certain amount of sense. No one could ever say he was less than dumb and loyal.





	Fida Canum

Arthur once read that men with dog daemons were naturally inclined to occupations where they had to follow orders—butlers, soldiers and the like. The author was suspect in how he came to that conclusion, citing a great deal of phrenology, but Arthur supposed it made certain amount of sense. No one could ever say he was less than dumb and loyal.

His life followed a certain rhythm. Dutch told him what needed to be done, and he did it. Folks needed feeding, so he fed them. Folks needed bullets, so he bought them. Dutch needed money, so he found it. He’d rob a train, rob a coach, lie, threaten, and beat a man half to death and then go out and do it all again the next day. When he woke in the morning, he got in the saddle with Dutch’s blessing in his head, and when he blew out the lantern at night his dreams did not trouble him. He fell asleep on the cold prairie earth with his daemon’s head on his chest, the stars wheeling above in their infinite mysteries, and found solace in the knowledge that he was a weapon well-used. 

All that changed after Blackwater.

They’d been chased by law before, but never this hard. There was a line of fire pushing them farther east, and Arthur knew it was only a matter of time before they crashed on the shores of civilization.

Dutch did not seem troubled. He smoked his cigars and read for days on end as if the frayed nerves of the gang were just that—nerves.

“We gonna make it this time, Dutch?” Arthur asked one day, quiet, in the shadow of Dutch’s tent. 

“Course, Arthur. We just need to push through this. We’ve been rattled, and it’s a bad spell, but we’ve had them before,” said Dutch. 

“I know, it just seems like we’re being dogged is all. Feels different.”

“Different, maybe.” Dutch stroked the long back of his polecat daemon where she lay coiled upon his knee. “The worst always feels different. Doesn’t mean we’re beat. People are going to look to you for strength, and I need you to show it to them. You’re the only one I can depend on, Arthur. You always have been.”

It was terrible, how easily he leaned into those words. Arthur knew Dutch could sweettalk a man into tapdancing in hell if he so desired, and still, Arthur never cared. What a stupid, starved soul he must have been to feel nourished by so little. 

* * *

Agent Milton showed up a week later. His daemon was a dog, too. Arthur wasn’t surprised. Most law daemons were.

Copper stood with her tail up and her red fur bristling, her eyes never wavering from where Milton’s black and white rat terrier sat by his feet. Copper was a muscled coonhound, easily twice over the terrier’s size. In a scrap, she’d break his back, but none of that would matter if Agent Ross pumped Arthur’s chest full of lead first.

All those calculations ran through Arthur's head as he listened to the insane offer Milton made and the horrors he'd inflicted on poor Mac Calloway. Just when he thought his blood was going to boil over, Milton and Ross left, Ross throwing back, “Enjoy your fishing while you can, kid,” as his mallard daemon flapped up to perch on the saddle in front of him.

“Who were they?” asked Jack.

“Don’t you worry about it.” Arthur reached out blindly and found the boy’s flossy head. “Come on, grab your fishing pole. Let’s get you home to your mama before she worries.”

Arthur was tight as a piano wire the whole ride back. Copper shivered with cold fury, and Jack’s daemon must have felt it, because she fluttered nervously around her partner's head, one moment a goldfinch, the next a moth. Arthur barely heard Lenny’s greeting as he rode into camp and got Jack down as quick as possible. He brushed off Abigail and went straight to Dutch’s tent.

He told Dutch what had happened, and Dutch lurched up from his chair, peering out at the dense trees that surrounded their camp. Arthur was already planning for how fast they’d need to pull up the tents, when Dutch said,

“I say we do nothing, just yet. They're just trying to scare us into doing something stupid. We have turned a corner...we survived them mountains. We just need to stay calm.”

“They’re gonna come sniffing for us soon, Dutch.”

“And we’ll be ready for them. _Nothing_ has changed.”

Dutch went back to reading then, and his polecat went back to grooming her paws beside him on the bed.

* * *

It turned out they had to move sooner rather than later. A mess of bloodletting went down in Valentine, all thanks to Leviticus Cornwall.

Arthur caught a glimpse of the man from the window where he and Dutch crouched, and it was enough to tell him everything he needed to know. Cornwall was a rich man, dressed in rich man’s clothes, and his daemon was a snow-white lioness with the flint eyes of a killer. Her massive paw crushed Marston’s timber wolf to the ground as if she were no more than a pup, and then let her up with equal unconcern, following her partner at a lope as he galloped out of town.

They’d made enemies, all right. But at least they were moving.

Clemens Point was just the safehaven they needed, and soon they were rolling up sleeves and shedding coats to sweat and suffer in the southern heat. Dutch and Hosea perked up at the first scent of gold, and the kudzu and the red clay and the strangeness of the people seemed a farflung world away from the mess with the Pinkertons.

Copper laughed at Arthur when he put on the sheriff’s badge. Dutch must have sensed his misery, because after blowing up a bunch of moonshine stills for the hick deputy, he said, “Why don't we race?”

"Sure," said Arthur. "Why not."

He hoisted his daemon onto the saddle and lashed her tight to himself with a rope. A dog couldn’t keep up with a horse at full gallop, and a daemon falling from the saddle could easily snap the tether between their souls and kill them both. Arthur had seen it more than once, and he wasn’t about to let it happen to him, nor let Dutch beat him neither.

“That's the spirit. On my word....set....go!” shouted Dutch, and Arthur put his spurs to his mare.

It was like old times. The Count was a hell of a horse, but Arthur was a hell of a rider, and he streaked past Dutch as they tore down the red clay road. He galloped down the forested path into Clemens Point and practically leapt from the saddle at the hitching post, his sides hurting from laughing.

"I never knew you were quite so good at running away, Arthur," said Dutch, reigning in. 

“Well, I never knew age had slowed you down quite so much," said Arthur. 

“Well, time is a bastard. When you get to be my age, you'll know that better than anything.” Dutch swung down off his horse. He was sweating through his vest, but he was smiling, too. "Be well. I had fun with you today. You're- well, I was going to say you're like a son to me, but you're more than that." Dutch put his hand on Arthur’s shoulder, and Arthur felt all four of his rings as he squeezed it and walked away. 

Copper wagged her tail.

* * *

The long summer stretched on. The Braithewaithe and Gray scheme that had seemed such a sure bet at the start began to feel suspiciously like a bad idea.

And then Micah got to talking about parlaying with Colm O'Driscoll. That sounded like the worst idea of all.

“I’m just looking out for the _gang_, Arthur,” said Micah, with one of his little bows. His scorpion daemon sat like a shiny black river stone on his shoulder—unreadable as a stone, too. "There's no reason to fight a battle on five fronts. This is a real chance for us to lighten our load." 

The biggest surprise was that Dutch agreed. “You’re with us, Arthur. We need you as backup.”

And so they rode half a day back to the Lemoyne border, then up into the scorched hills of the badlands. Micah prattled off some plan where Arthur would sit up on a ridge with his scope.

"You still got that rifle, don't you?" asked Micah. 

"Yeah, yeah," said Arthur. 

"Then me and Dutch walk right into the lion's den with you to cover us." 

"Okay, just keep calm. Unless I give you a reason not to," said Arthur.

"Oh, we'll be fine," said Dutch. "we got you."

"I will do my best," sighed Arthur.

"Oh, my dear and trusted friend, with you watching over me, I would walk into hell itself." 

After that, Arthur rode without complaint to his perch on the ridge, and there watched the parlay go down while Copper covered his back. Colm looked grayer and stringier than ever, walking stiff like his knees had gone bad. His rattlesnake daemon was coiled around his neck like a rope, no doubt whispering in his ear.

Copper barked, “Behind us!” a second before a blinding white pain flared through them both. It was a burning deep inside, and Arthur knew his daemon had been shot.

“God.” He clutched his leg at a wound that was not there. Copper was kicking on her back, baying and whimpering.

Boots ran up the ridge. One kicked Arthur in the head, and something with teeth bit into Copper’s neck. The next thing Arthur knew, the butt of a gun was whistling toward his face, then nothing.

* * *

He’d never hurt so bad in his life. A gunshot to the shoulder, Copper shot in her leg, and him kicked and punched and pistol whipped within an inch of his life. Arthur supposed it was fair—he’d killed dozens of O’Driscolls. Now the snake was winding around to bite him.

They hung him up like meat in some root cellar, with Copper lame and helpless beneath him, sometimes cursing them and their mothers, sometimes begging them not to hurt him. The O’Driscoll daemons tormented her, biting and stinging and clawing her ragged. Arthur wasn’t sure how long they were down in that cellar, but it was long enough for him to know that for the first time in his life there were depths and fathoms of pain he’d never imagined, and it filled him with a mortal dread. Colm whispered some plot in his ear about luring Dutch in, and all Arthur could think was how small they all were, how pitiful, how easily strength was reduced to weakness.

He wasn’t sure how he survived. Copper got the file for him. He killed a man with his bare hands, and that was horrible, and then he crawled out and somehow got himself on a horse. He couldn’t lift Copper, so she had to limp alongside as he sped away, clinging to that horse’s neck with some reserve he didn’t know he had until darkness overtook him.

He dreamed of a deer.

* * *

Arthur didn’t heal right. He wasn’t sure why. There was no gangrene in his shoulder, nor any other sign of infection. Copper had suffered Miss Grimshaw digging the bullet out of her flank with a pair of tongs, which was close enough to touching to make them both uncomfortable, but her wound healed cleanly, too.

His ribs hurt, as did his knees, balls, and teeth. He limped around camp with the stiffness of an old man, and ate gingerly from the stew. The gang was gentle with him, gentle enough to annoy him, and tried to joke and ease his troubles.

But something inside him had burrowed down deep. It was like a part of his soul had gone into hibernation, and he was beginning to suspect that there it would stay. The pain he’d endured in that cellar was a horror that stalked his waking hours, and he found himself dwelling on all the suffering he’d inflicted in his life- the way men’s bones cracked under his knuckles and their eyes filled with fear as he took on the shape of their worst nightmare. Thomas Downes he dwelled on most of all, recent as he was.

Dutch was full of apologies. Arthur couldn’t help but take the piss out of him—it had always been stupid idea—but for the first time he felt a doubt that troubled him.

“You were coming for me, right Dutch?”

Dutch looked up from his book, surprised. “Arthur. You really think I would have left you behind? After all we been through?”

“Course not,” said Arthur.

“Good,” said Dutch. “Now if you are done with foolish questions, I have a dialectic with Evelyn Miller to finish.”

“Sure,” said Arthur, walking away.

“And Arthur?”

Arthur turned.

“I am sorry, son,” said Dutch. "You know that you are precious to me." 

The words did not move him the way they should have. Like everything else, they struck him dully, and Arthur wondered at his own lack of feeling. Dutch would never abandon him, he knew that, but for the first time his certainty found no foothold. 

“I think I’m going to have a limp,” said Copper, lying in the shade of their tent. The bullet wound had closed up, though try as she did she couldn’t get the leg to stretch all the way. “It’s like it's shorter than it used to be.”

“Yeah, well, we were always deformed in the looks department,” he said.

Copper did not laugh. She had never shared his gallows humor, or his taste for self-depreciation.

She was right, though: she did have a limp.

* * *

Arthur threw himself back into his work. He shot at bounty hunters the same as before, robbed strangers on the road unlucky enough to cross him, rustled horses for that pair of dimwits down by the river, but his heart wasn’t in it. Before, he could take pleasure in knowing that every act of violence was for the good of the gang. Now, the memory of pain sapped him of his ruthlessness, and it was a rare day when he did not go to bed confused.

It must have been a portent, because everything went to hell real quick.

Sean with his brains blown out, little Jack stolen and his mother beside herself—Dutch rallied them all to mount up, and Arthur pushed his horse to the front of the charge. Copper rode on the saddle with him, unable to keep up like she used to, while John rode alongside, his wolf panting with hell in her eyes.

The big house with all its lights loomed ominous and waiting. They reined up, and Arthur drew his shotgun and pistol, swinging the strap of the Lancaster over his shoulder.

Dutch called, “Arthur, with me.”

Arthur went to his side. They marched to the fountain in front of the house with guns drawn, the moon like boiling mercury overhead. 

“Get out here now, you inbred trash!” bellowed Dutch.

And like that, it began. Oh, they were cruel. Arthur advanced on the Braithewaite men like death incarnate, unloading into them again and again while bullets whistled around him. Copper tore a man’s quail daemon to pieces, then set her fangs into the backbone of an opossum trying to scurry away while her man squealed. They laid waste to god knew how many men, then set upon the house itself.

As he and John shoved in the bedroom door, Arthur raised his pistol and blew out the brains of a man aiming his gun--his daemon snuffing out like a light. John took care of the other one, and then there was Dutch and Hosea, no cons or flowery words, just vengeance.

Arthur felt his stomach lurch as Dutch dragged Catherine Braithwaite down the stairs by her hair. Her lynx daemon howled and tried to swipe at his polecat, but the polecat was wrapped tight around Dutch’s neck, glaring at the lynx in contempt.

As Arthur came down the stairs, a burning man staggered out from the parlor and fell to the floor. Arthur vaguely recognized him as one of the sons.

“Arthur,” said Dutch, “you got that one?”

The man was near dead, his daemon flickering in and out. Arthur still raised his shotgun and splattered his brains across the parquet. Catherine Braithewaite wailed and went limp, and Dutch had to swing her up on one shoulder and carry her out of the house.

_Why did I do that?_ Arthur wondered, and followed Dutch out into the flickering night.

It was a question he would ask himself more and more in the coming days. 

* * *

The smoke from the burning manor hung over the county like a death shroud. It seemed proper that Agent Milton came knocking. 

Copper growled low in her chest. Milton’s rat terrier growled back, hackles raising. Arthur stepped fluidly between Milton and Dutch, and he saw Dutch smile out of the corner of his eye.

“See, my people are loyal, agent. They don’t stick with me for wages, or our of misguided patriotism. They stick with me because we have got something- something to live and die for. Something you are incapable of understanding.”

“Idiocy and loyalty often run together,” said Milton, meeting Arthur’s eyes. “Maybe if your attack dog had any brains in his head, he would know that he’s serving the wrong master.” 

And with that, the agents left, and it was time to move on.

* * *

Arthur did not much care for Shady Belle. It was infested with poison oak and alligators and the air was sticky and abuzz with mosquitos. Still, they settled into life same as before, even if folks were still jumpy. They found a bit of reprieve when they got Jack back, and Dutch started going on about his grand plans for Tahiti. Whatever part of Arthur's soul had been wounded by Colm and his men scabbed over, enough that he could almost pretend that he was the same as before most days. He’d sit under a willow tree and sketch the gators in the water, or else smoke behind the house with Ms. Adler and her magnificent cougar daemon.

“Does Dutch seem different to you?” asked John one day behind the chuck wagon. He was filing down a shotgun barrel.

“Different how?” asked Arthur, looking up from his journal.

“Different like he’s not making any sense,” said John. “You actually believe we’re all going to Tahiti?”

“I don’t know.” In the grass, John’s she-wolf wrestled with Copper. The wolf was brawnier than her, and was pinning her down easy. It had been the embarrassment of Arthur’s life when John’s daemon had settled bigger than his. “It’s not the craziest scheme he’s come up with.”

John stopped filing. “Arthur, you two derailed a train in San Denis. Every lawman in the state is going be here soon. What are we still doing here?”

That was the question of the hour. Why were they running east, why weren’t they splitting up, why weren’t they laying low? And every time there was the reasonable answer: we can’t go back west, why do you want to split up the family, we need money to survive.

“And you’re having doubts too, aren’t you?” asked John.

Copper snarled and bit the she-wolf on the ear. Arthur thought of the Braithewaithe son, and the dreams of Confederate gold, and Sean’s head bursting in half. He thought of Jenny and Mac and Davey, and how their bad luck seemed to be fueled by a curse. He thought too of the root cellar, and the knowledge that he was alone and no one was coming to save him from his agony. All the misgivings and swirling thoughts of the last few weeks made him feel lost, as if the world had jumped its track and could not be put back on it. 

But most of all, despite everything, he thought of Dutch’s ringed hand on his shoulder, and how nothing in the world had ever filled him up better than knowing that the gang needed him, and that Dutch needed him, too.

“We gotta stick by him,” said Arthur. “He’d do the same for us.”

John gave him a long look. “Maybe,” he said, and got back to filing. The wolf and the hound sprang apart, all the play drained out of them.

* * *

The plans were made. It was a nightmare getting them to that point, between the giant gator and drowning Angelo Bronte and poor Kieran losing his head, but the plans were set, and they were going. They were really going this time.

They fancied up their daemons and put on their best suits. The bank was waiting for them like a fat goose full of eggs, and they all knew their parts. Miss Grimshaw and Pearson packed the wagons to wait for their return, all ready for the long trip overseas.

Arthur was pleased to be done with Shady Belle. The soupy air of the swamp had gotten into his chest, and he’d been coughing hard enough to stay miserable. Copper wasn’t doing much better—Arthur could hear the mucus in her lungs when they lay side by side at night.

“The air’s cleaner in the tropics,” Dutch assured him, as if he’d been there. “White sands, crystal waters, not a factory or smokestack on the horizon. You’ll feel twenty years younger, son. I promise you.”

* * *

There were holes in Arthur's memory where Guarma was supposed to be. He remembered Hosea dying, and the moment when Lenny’s owl daemon turned to dust. He remembered too the storm, and waking up on that white sandy shore with a crushing pain in his lungs. He remembered Dutch killing the old woman, and the gunship firing, and the surf heaving red with blood around the dead bodies littered on the beach. It was all there in pictures, but separate from each other, like it had happened to somebody else.

That was happening more and more to him—his mind feeling fevered and strange. The coughing that had started in Shady Belle had become a hacking, wheezing racket that kept him up all night, made worse by the aches and pains that had plagued him since the island. He was more tired than he could ever remember being, and for three days in Lakay he found himself listless and ill, time moving like sludge around him.

Dutch was rattled. The Pinkerton attack on their camp had done something to him—made him manic. Arthur approached him one morning and found him muttering about chess moves, the polecat licking her paw raw and red on his lap.

“Arthur,” he said. “Do you have my back?”

“Always, Dutch,” said Arthur, and Dutch smiled. “But there's more than your back to worry about." 

And just like that, the smile vanished.

"We need more money," said Arthur. "We've been on the run for months now, and I seen you..." Arthur struggled. The doubt that had been festering inside him since the root cellar came surging back now, angry in ways he did not comprehend. "I seen you killing folk in cold blood like you always told me not to. And I'm sorry, but I can't but think that if we-" 

"There is country," said Dutch, louder than necessary, "in Roanoke Ridge, past Butcher Creek I believe we could hold." 

"Okay," said Arthur.

"You and Charles, you take folk up that way. Micah and I need to do some reconnaissance. I ain't got a final plan yet. Arthur, I ain't got a...I just need time. I need time and no traitors." 

Arthur gathered Charles and rode north into hill country. The horizon became mountains like blue smoke, their valleys intercut by flooded quarries and dark pools. Charles was quiet as ever, his razorback daemon snorting along beside his horse. It had surprised Arthur at first that someone like Charles would have a pig for a daemon, but then he remembered that pigs were one of the smarter animals around, smarter than dogs at least.

They cleared out a cave of blood and butchery, putting down a dozen odd Murfree Brood. Some poor woman was caged in the back, her squirrel daemon shivering against her breast.

“I’ll take her home,” said Arthur. “You go back to camp.”

“You sure?” asked Charles.

“Yeah, I can handle this.”

He took the girl back to her mama, then set up his tent in the woods outside Annesburg. He woke with a burning ache in his chest. His head pounded, and he had to lean against a tree to piss. Copper trembled in the mist of the morning dew, and their eyes met, each a bloodshot mirror of the other.

They mounted up on his horse and- figuring they both needed a bath and a night’s sleep in a warm bed to feel better- set off down the road to San Denis.

* * *

All his life, his desires had spun on one axis, and that axis was Dutch van der Linde.

Every now and then someone would threaten to tilt him off it—Mary, Eliza, his son—but never enough to make him leave. Loyalty to Dutch and the gang came first, and everything after had to fall in line. Was that so wrong, Arthur wondered? Was it wrong to want to believe that devoting himself to one man would somehow save him from the cruelty of the world?

Sadie wanted to break John out of Sisika. Arthur agreed with it, but he needed to ask Dutch first, get his counsel or his help. That, and he needed rest.

He wiped the blood off his collar and rode back into camp with the silence of the world pressing on his ears. Tilly might have said something to him, he wasn’t sure. He walked past everyone to the table in the back, where Trelawney was playing cards. He sat down heavy in the chair and let all thought bleed out of him, feeling like he was a man locked in a cabin with a bear outside, and that if he opened the door even a crack, his doom would rush in, and he’d at last have to face it in all its certainty.

Copper had tried to talk to him in her cold, no-nonsense way after the doctor’s office, but he’d ignored her, and the rift in their feelings was like a sharp knife between them. Trelawney’s mustache was overgrown, and his coat looked shabbier than usual. His big crow daemon Hawthorne sat on his shoulder, his feathers drab and oily.

“—all right, Arthur?”

Arthur blinked. Trelawney was speaking to him.

“Fine.” Arthur coughed into the back of his hand. He wiped the hand on his trousers and changed the subject. “What the hell kind of cards are those?”

“Tarot,” said Trelawney, with none of his usual aplomb. “They're supposed to help sharpen the mind and reveal the way forward.”

“Any luck with that?”

“None at all,” said Trelawney. “Would you like me to ask the deck about you?”

Arthur would like to curl up in his bed for a thousand years until the awful world sank into the sea and all souls drowned. “Sure,” he said.

Trelawney shuffled the deck. He held the wrinkled cards out and said, “pick five.”

Arthur picked one, and as he did so, there came a commotion from the far end of camp. Uncle was back with Molly O’Shea tottering piss drunk in tow, her cat daemon mowing anxiously behind her.

What happened next was a lot of cussing and yelling. Molly went on about how she ratted to the Pinkertons, how she did it to spite Dutch. Arthur searched his feelings for outrage or betrayal, and found only his own aches and pains, and a deep sadness for Molly who’d been lonely since the day Dutch sweettalked her away from her family and all she knew.

Dutch’s hand was on his pistol, and the polecat was whispering in his ear.

“Dutch,” said Arthur. “Just let it go.”

“Arthur?”

“Just leave it. Let her go,” said Arthur.

None of it mattered. Miss Grimshaw had never suffered a traitor, and she didn’t suffer this one now. Arthur stared down at the body of Molly on the ground, her daemon trailing away into golden dust, and looked around at the faces of his friends. Javier spat. Bill was already walking away. Mary-Beth had a hand over her mouth, but Tilly stood beside her, arms crossed over her chest, unmoved as a stone.

Dutch gave Arthur a look of disgust, then went to brood like Achilles in his tent.

It was some time later that Arthur realized he was still clutching the card in his sweaty hand. He uncrinkled it, and saw a young man prancing through a meadow with a little dog at his heels, heedless of the cliff he was about to walk off.

Copper was speaking to him. “We have to get John.”

“Yeah,” said Arthur, putting the card in his pocket. “We do.”

* * *

Arthur wished he could say that it didn't hurt to be replaced. Him and Sadie breaking John out of prison had put Dutch in a bloody fit, and he had not shared a red cent of his plans with Arthur since then. More and more, Arthur saw him with Micah, and the jealousy that bubbled in his gut made him sicker than he could stand. 

Not that Dutch noticed. How the man failed to see that Arthur was dying was a mystery. Every morning Arthur woke choking on his own blood, and every night he coughed until his throat was flayed and exhaustion dragged him down into twitching sleep. One morning, he was shuffling glassy-eyed to the stew pot, when he heard a voice say,

"What happened to you?"

Dutch was watching him, the look on his face more heartsore than Arthur thought possible. The polecat's glare was like ice.

"Oh Arthur, why did you have to go and change on me?" said Dutch. 

"I'm here because of you, Dutch," said Arthur.

"Are you, though?"

"If you can't see that, then you're even more gone than I thought," said Arthur.

Saying the words was like fighting instinct. He hated judging Dutch, hated doubting his every word and move. It was just that nothing made sense anymore. Maybe it had never made sense. Or maybe that night in the root cellar had cracked him worse than he thought, and now the consumption had shattered him of all his illusions.

"Got some business in town," said Arthur. "Be gone a few days."

"Fine," said Dutch, and did not watch him go. 

* * *

Arthur started staying away from camp longer. He figured Charles would keep folks fed, and they were already well-up on money. He’d pick a direction, find a wooded spot near water, and pitch his tent. No one came looking for him, and in nature he found blessed quiet. He noticed the bones of animals more. The shoots of new leaves. He found himself riding along a high ridge one day and turned a corner to find a field of red flowers. For no reason at all he got off his horse and sat in the midst of them.

Everything felt sharper somehow, brighter. Food tasted different. There were sores in his mouth and a stabbing pain behind his eye that never went away. His bowel movements came out burning and watery. On a bad day, the coughing would drag him to his knees, and there he'd lie, drowning in dry air until his ribs were bruised and all he could do was sleep. The parts of him that had once been reliable—his heart, his bladder, his guts—failed him in ways that made him wish he was dead. He was more sorrowed than he had ever been, and it made the brief moments when he wasn't coughing blood into his handkerchief almost beautiful.

Even the connection to his daemon felt precious. At times, he could feel Copper as near to him as his own heartbeat, and other times it was like their connection was fraying like a pulled thread- the universe preparing to snap them apart and fling them to their final oblivion.

In those moments, Copper would lay her head in his lap, and together they would feel the beating proof of their life between them. 

He found folks in need on his wanderings. There was an old man with a wooden leg whose horse had run off—his marmot daemon fretting over him where he’d been bucked. Copper curled up with her while Arthur got the man’s horse for him, and they talked awhile. He ended up going back and fishing with the veteran, and it felt odd to find friendship outside the gang. It got him thinking on what his life might have been like if he’d never met Dutch van der Linde--and had to turn away from that thought lest it burn him.

There was a widow, too. A few months ago, he probably would have robbed her. Now, as his own body failed him, the thought of leaving her to starvation was near unbearable.

He showed her how to hunt and skin a rabbit. Her daemon was a handsome pine marten who balked when Copper showed him how to bite into a rabbit’s neck, but was willing to try on a corpse at least. Catherine thanked him for helping her. She even gave him a bed to weather out one of his fits when he fell ill during dinner. During those visits he felt no fear, or guilt, and thought not on the gang at all.

The strangest moment came when he was riding through a covered bridge and three men jumped out with guns pointed at him.

“Get down off that horse, now!” shouted the shortest one. He sounded young.

Arthur did. He kept his hands up. Copper crouched in the saddle.

“Easy,” said Arthur. His voice was raw, so he had to speak up. “No one has to die.”

“Shut your mouth.” The boy fished around in Arthur’s coat pockets until he found his billfold, his beetle daemon buzzing around his ear. His buddy rifled through the saddlebag.

They hadn’t taken Arthur's guns. It was a stupid mistake. Not long ago, Arthur would have killed every one of them and then looted their bodies for spare change. He wouldn’t have even felt bad about it.

Now he let the boy rob him and did nothing. He was tired, and his chest hurt.

It wasn’t in him anymore.

The kid grinned when he opened the billfold and saw how much was in there. Then he cracked Arthur across the jaw with the butt of the rifle, and him and his friends jumped back on their horses, galloping away in a gale of laughter.

Copper hopped down off the horse and sat with him while he wheezed into his sleeve. He waited for shame, and it did not come. Only a brokenheartedness for the world. 

When he rode back into camp, no one much remarked upon his return, though Miss Grimshaw seemed relieved. He collapsed into his cot with his boots still on and coughed for the rest of the evening. He waited for Dutch to rise and ask him where he had been, but Dutch never did.

* * *

The whole situation spiraled downward toward madness. Eagle Flies, Leviticus Cornwall, the U.S. Army. Arthur trailed along after Dutch like an old dog on a leash, enduring the way Dutch and Micah spoke to him as if he were a child. Javier and Bill had turned on him likewise, though he could not say why. They seemed to delight in his weakness, and like circling wolves who had suffered his high rank in the pack for years, now eagerly awaited his fall.

Folks departed without warning. Pearson in the night, Mary-Beth a few days after. Trelawney and his crow scuttled off with Arthur’s blessing, and Arthur wished he’d remembered to give him his card back.

The only folks who didn’t seem to regard him with contempt or desperation were Charles, Sadie, and John. The did not mention his illness, and that in itself was a kindness.

Charles in particular was eerily unrattled by the collapse of the gang. He spent more time at Wapiti than he did in camp, and observed the fractures in the gang with cool calculation. His boar greeted the other daemons with her usual courtesy, taking everything in with her long-lashed, golden eyes.

“Care to go fishing?” asked Charles, one morning.

Arthur's head pounded, and his ribs ached from coughing himself to sleep. Still, he recognized the invitation for what it was. He forced himself to his feet, and with tingling hands tugged his boots on. Charles did not give him his arm, though the boar did prop up Copper as they walked down to the river.

Charles swung his line out into the dark, still waters. Arthur was too tired to fish, so he sat against a tree, fighting against the monstrous weariness that was his constant companion now. Copper was listless and glassy-eyed, and Charles’s boar settled down beside her in the grass, warming her with her bulk.

“How you feeling?” asked Charles.

“Like I’ve been kicked in the head by a mule,” said Arthur, coughing.

“I wish there was something more I could do.”

“Yeah, well, ain’t that everybody’s story.”

Charles looked at him. His brown eyes were sad, like they expected nothing of the world and were still disappointed. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Why are you still loyal to Dutch after all this?”

"What do you mean?"

“You keep looking at him like you’re hoping he’ll snap out of it. It’s like watching a man get kicked in the teeth over and over and still go crawling back for more. I’m here because I’m looking out for people, but I don’t have any illusions about Dutch anymore. Not when he's using Eagle Flies like he is.”

It was hard to argue with that last part. “I guess I just keep thinking that if Micah wasn’t whispering in his ear, Dutch might snap out of it. He'd go back to the way he was before.”

“Or maybe this is who he always was, and he just needed an excuse,” said Charles.

“You haven’t known him as long as I have.”

“Maybe that means I can see him more clearly.”

Arthur looked up into the golden canopy overhead. The aspen trees were shedding their yellow leaves in carpets.

“When I was a kid, Dutch and Hosea and I used to ride up into the mountains and wait out the law. We’d pitch a tent somewhere, fish a little, go hunting. I was fifteen, and Copper hadn’t settled yet. It was embarrassing, being that old and not having it happen. One day, Dutch and I went out to see if we could flush us out some rabbits for dinner. We found this big old woodchuck instead—mean bastard. Copper turned into a dog and she dove right into the undergrowth after him. I could feel her getting clawed and bit to hell, but a few minutes later she came out with that chuck in her jaws, wagging her tail at us.”

A leaf floated down and stuck to his coat. Arthur left it there.

“I kept waiting for Dutch to make a joke or something. His polecat hadn’t even tried to take down that chuck, and I figured he might be sore about me getting it instead of him. But he looked at Copper and said, ‘that is one tough-as-nails hound. You did good, son.’ Copper stayed a dog after that. She settled that day and never changed again.”

He didn’t know what had gotten into him, to tell that story. Copper closed her eyes.

“Dumb and loyal,” said Arthur. “That’s who I’ve always been.”

Charles reeled in the line. He set the pole down and came and sat in the grass beside Arthur. “You got one of those right.”

Arthur started to laugh, but it broke down into coughing. He doubled over, his ribs creaking against the punishment. Charles put a hand on his shoulder and said, “My father was a broken man. The world had failed him, and he punished himself for it with drink. Punished others for it, too. I stuck by him for a long time. Eventually, I left.”

Arthur stopped coughing and wheezed. Air came into the wet spiderwebs of his lungs. He let Charles pull him to his feet.

“Be loyal to those who are loyal to you,” said Charles. “Anything else is like pouring love into a well with no bottom. Think on it.”

* * *

The betrayal, when it came, happened on a field of fire.

Dutch left him. It shouldn’t have shocked him, but it did. Dutch had betrayed John, betrayed Molly in a strange way, but somehow Arthur figured he was the exception. Dutch would leave every other man behind, but never him.

Fool, fool, fool.

Arthur staggered out into the smoke and heat of the oil yard, Eagle Flies leaning hard on him, the prince’s angry bluejay limp in Copper’s jaws.

“You ran away,” said Arthur.

“I did not such thing,” said Dutch.

“You left me there when I was calling for your help.”

Dutch shook his head, as if this was all tiresome. “Don’t be a fool. I’d never leave you behind, Arthur.”

And then they rode their separate ways. Charles and Arthur took the dying prince home to his father, who had trusted them to be good men and to stop Dutch’s wickedness.

Arthur did not stay to watch Eagle Flies’s daemon turn to dust.

"What are they going to do now?" Arthur asked Charles outside the teepee. 

"They must move, and fast. I'll stay and help them," said Charles.

"Yeah, I'll stay, too," said Arthur.

"No, my friend, you have others who need you. Good people. I know you’ll find your way." Charles pulled him close. Arthur let himself be held. Then he got back on his horse, and rode with his head full of fire and madness back into the hills, before his own dying body pulled him from the saddle.

* * *

Arthur heard once that animals that chew off their own legs to escape a trap will loll around joyously afterwards, bursting with euphoria even as they bleed to death.

That was the rush he got when Dutch left Abigail to her fate. Some final thread snapped inside him, and suddenly he was falling, cut loose from whatever reality he had known a day before.

Dutch had let John die. Dutch had left him, and now was leaving Abigail and Jack to suffer. 

It was like being told the moon was made of paper, he thought, down on his hands and knees, his daemon coughing up blood with him. How could something that big, that bright, be false?

“Come on,” said Sadie, pulling him up. Her cougar butted Copper with his head over and over until she found her feet. “You’re not done yet and neither am I. Time to move, cowboy. Folks need you.”

Arthur wiped the blood off his mouth. The world was brand new, and he was running out of time.

And Abigail needed him.

* * *

"Now go on, get out of here," said Arthur.

"Arthur, what are you doing?" said Sadie, mounting her horse.

"I gotta go have a little chat before I get much sicker."

Abigail started crying again. Her barn swallow daemon chittered helplessly on her shoulder. "Oh, Arthur."

"Don't you 'oh, Arthur' me. Neither of you two, not now. You both _know_." Arthur lifted Abigail into the saddle behind Sadie. "You're good women, good people. The best. You go get that boy. There'll be time for sorrow later."

Abigail gave him a key- the final piece to getting all their money back from Dutch. Arthur squeezed her hand. "Abigail Roberts."

"I always was a good thief," she said.

"That you was," said Arthur. "Now go on, get out of here."

And then it was just him and his daemon. He got himself up in the saddle and lowered his arms for her to jump up. 

“I want to run,” said Copper.

Their lungs were both shredded. Her ribs showed under her skin, and he wasn’t much better. They’d be raw and spent by the time they got to camp.

But it might be the last time. The light was golden and strange. Arthur put his hat on and stuck his heels to his horse, trotting down the forest path back to Beaver’s Hollow.

Copper wasn’t young anymore. There was gray in her muzzle, and she was stiff most days, but when Arthur looked down at his daemon, she ran beside him like a red flame—bounding along the way she used to when they were young out west. Back then, she’d be a wolverine, then a wolf, then a jackrabbit. She was as sour and cantankerous as he was, but he sensed in her a good heart in a way he never did for himself.

They were one soul in two bodies, and it seemed strange that for a brief time they had fallen into these two shapes, a man and a dog, before the world snuffed them out and returned them to the earth and its great silence.

* * *

It was no use trying to outrun death. Arthur fought for each breath as he and John ran up the mountain, and with each step he felt for sure that he was going to die. His vision blackened at the corners. His hands trembled. He shot at Pinkertons without a prayer of hitting them, and urged John onward toward escape.

Copper fell. She was frothing at the mouth, each breath a whine. John’s wolf tried to urge her on to no avail.

"Push, Arthur, c'mon!" said John.

Arthur hauled himself up. "We ain’t both going to make it." 

He was never eloquent with goodbyes. He gave John his hat and satchel and a promise to live a life of love and dignity. Then he and his daemon turned back to defend the pass from the monsters who had chased them all the way from the sunset country out west, until someone tackled him from behind. 

He never stood a chance against Micah. Copper hung back, snarling and barking, unable to get at Micah’s scorpion where she was curled up safe in his pocket. Arthur tried to throw Micah down to crush her, but Micah was smarter than that, and guarded that side of his body preciously. Arthur could hardly breathe, his heart clunking in a sick, slow way like it was underwater. He still managed to break Micah’s nose and bruise him like a peach.

When the gun went skittering, Copper lunged for it. Her jaws were inches from it, when a polecat landed on her neck and sank its fangs to the bone. Arthur and his dog both screamed, a boot coming down firmly on the gun.

“It is over, Arthur,” said Dutch.

That voice moved through him like warm whiskey. Arthur felt himself lean into it, like he always had, like the dumb, loyal thing he was. He couldn’t help it. It was simply a part of him.

“Oh, Dutch….he's a rat. You know it, and I know it." 

Arthur tried to make him see. The polecat had returned to Dutch's shoulder, and Arthur could tell from her hissing that she and her human were in deep disagreement. Dutch looked at Micah like he’d broken his heart somehow, then down at Arthur, wracked with some nameless torment he could not speak.

“I gave you all I had,” said Arthur. "I did." 

Dutch lurched back like he'd been snake bit. That lost look came over his face again, and when he turned and walked away, Arthur could not hate him for it. Neither of them could be more than what they were.

Micah left. He did not even stay to finish the deed. Arthur was left gasping for air on the cold mountaintop, his brain and heart failing in their rhythms. 

“Arthur, my Arthur," whined Copper. His daemon dragged herself on her belly to him. He grabbed her by the scruff and gathered her into his arms. The tether between them was unspooling fast, and when it split, there would be nothing to catch them. It was over, right when they had figured out who they really were. They had done evil and they had done good, but they had never betrayed anybody, not even themselves. They had been loyal, because that was all they could be. 

The deer walked into the sunlight, and Arthur felt his daemon turn to dust, and the rest of him followed after.


End file.
